


this heart is starting to come to life

by ineachandeveryway



Category: That '70s Show
Genre: Fix-it (eventually)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2020-07-28 19:11:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20069116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineachandeveryway/pseuds/ineachandeveryway
Summary: It’s a subtle thing, learning to tolerate her. He keeps it to himself. Through the birthday party he never asks for but gets (and secretly enjoys), and through the weird feeling that fogs up in him when Kelso freaks and drops Jackie for the California women and sun./ Or, a study in things Hyde learns about himself through Jackie, up through season seven.





	1. strawberry & lemon

**Author's Note:**

> I've been re-watching clips of these two recently, and there's so much more to discover when you look at something the fourth or fifth time over, isn't there? It's motivated me to write after a long, long time, and that feels good. I hope you enjoy, even if updates are sporadic. Comments are appreciated, as always. 
> 
> Title is taken from "Love is Beginning" by Imaginary Future.

Everything about Hyde is learned behavior.

The trials and tribulations of child abandonment are a class that life throws at him at the ripe age of six, and everything thereafter is more of a subtle, internalized process: the eloquence of sarcasm (originally a Forman mastery), how to throw a good punch (via Kelso, lovely target), attraction to girls (mainly Donna). It’s the kind of shtick that forms his only basis for emotional survival nearly sixteen years and counting.

And he doesn’t know how to love, at least, not in a way he finds applicable. There are too many judgments he’s made up in his head to be able to process that two people could care for each other beyond the power of giving orders and modern materialism. It just looks and feels like another way to survive, and he’s already got his own handful of methods to rely on.

Jackie Burkhart, however, has never cared for the readily available. There is always something new to learn from her dolled-up guide to life and prosperity, which falls into Hyde’s hands the night of her sophomore prom.

They stand outside on his porch, and she thanks him for the corsage—a rose, dusty purple—then says, “I can go with anyone, even you.”

He doesn’t get it at the time.

The words totally fly over his head, and don’t sink in for the better part of a year until this one night when he’s kissing her on top of his car (on a whim, and her lead), and there’s a flutter of a heartbeat that thrums under his rib cage that he begs himself to just shut up and deny.

“Did you feel something?” Jackie asks, but it enters his head all woozy. He doesn’t know how to process. His lips buzz.

“Uhh, no,” Hyde throws out, clammed up. “Well. . .”—she raises an eyebrow—“. . . no,” and the moment’s over, just like that. They’re back to their usual gig.

(“Shut up and take me home, you pig!”)

It’s implicitly understood.

Jackie babbles on and on about whatever vapid interest lay at the top of her priority list before their “date”, and Hyde mentally zones out to whatever’s playing on Forman’s TV. Eventually, there’s another round of her and Kelso, somewhere in the middle of it, but Hyde doesn’t pay it more mind than he would regular entertainment. (That’s why he bets on the fights.)

The school year goes by smooth, a few quiet bumps in the road.

Except, there is one thing. It doesn’t bother him all that much—the babbling.

Sometimes he thinks if he focuses more on her face than her voice that he can tolerate it, let it in a little at a time until he finds himself transfixed with an odd wonder by her whole world view, and how someone can have so much energy to spare only for themselves but not end up like him, glued to a seat in Forman’s basement every day.

It’s a subtle thing, learning to tolerate her. He keeps it to himself. Through the birthday party he never asks for but gets (and secretly enjoys), and through the weird feeling that fogs up in him when Kelso freaks and drops Jackie for the California women and sun.

And then one day, it just rams him in the face, literally. His hands are on either side of her head, tangled up in curls that smell like a nice mix of strawberry and lemon while she kisses a taste akin to mint into his mouth. It’s been months since that last kiss on the hood of his car, but it still feels the same: buzzed, elevated. The neurons in his brain fire off at Hyperspace speed.

“Dammit,” he murmurs, breaking for air. He doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. He doesn’t know what the hell this is.

(And as Jackie will tell him later, there are some things he’s just too damn poor to understand.)


	2. kindness & care

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'd originally planned to just focus on Jackie and Hyde from season five onward, the first chapter being an introductory exception, but in writing this chapter I realized how much I love the build-up to their relationship and writing about it, too. So, here's a little more pre-relationship goodness, back-end of season two focused. Comments are appreciated, as always.

It’s inexplicable to Hyde that rejection is a thing he learns on his own, because aren’t the big milestones something parents are supposed to be responsible for? He asks Donna to dance, tells Donna he wants to kiss her, kisses Donna under a roof where she’s already with someone else—this ugly, spiteful thing rears up in him and it’s so foreign he just doesn’t know how to deal. 

Hyde walks around for months and acts on lovestruck whims like he’s a freaking zombie, until Forman finally decides to put his foot down and gain some balls. “Hyde, if she wanted to be at the library, she’d be at the library.” 

He’s at a table in some decked up restaurant, impromptu, a drunk-as-hell Donna swaying precariously beside him, and having to hear this from his best friend who he’s managed to successfully semi-bully since kindergarten just _ stings _, because Forman is telling the truth. Donna’s not at the library, clearly. 

She never planned to be.

* * *

He tells himself afterward that he’s never going to allow himself to care that much again because between loneliness and rejection, realistically, the former is undeniably more survivable. He can live with being alone. He’s been alone his whole life. The corporate romance scheme has got nothing on him, as evinced by his period as a chill bachelor through the rest of the summer and fall. 

“But I noticed that you’re alone a lot, and _ I’m _ alone a lot. So let’s be alone together!” 

Hyde doesn’t know what part of him folding laundry from the past weekend signals Jackie to attach herself to his person, but nonetheless this afternoon she trails him through the basement, insufferably yapping because it’s the only thing she seems to know how to do outside of cheer-leading and being Kelso’s girlfriend. 

Ex-girlfriend.

That’s odd to think about. He figured she’d be gone when she finally came into that label. But “Look!” she parrots instead, following him into his room. “We’re alone right now.” 

Hyde wishes someone else would just walk into the basement and take her problems off his conscience. He wants to kick himself for ever thinking this break-up would be foolproof because instead it’s left him with a charity case that follows him around like a bad smell—figuratively speaking at least. She does have good taste in perfume. 

And boots, he soon discovers. Jackie struts out of Point Place Mall a few hours later after treating him to the _ Sizzler’s _ salad bar and a brief shopping expedition. The boots on his feet look fifty times better than any pair he’s ever worn, leather polished to a shine he can only attempt to replicate at home. It’s expected, what with her kind of money, but he’s still surprised by the fact that she picked them out herself. 

And he’s even more surprised when she kisses him ten minutes later in the car, because what the hell? One minute he’s thanking her for the boots and explaining the logistics of this one-time pity-trip and the next she’s making a move? He hasn’t done anything to warrant this kind of come-on from a girl since Donna, and she didn’t even try to reciprocate. 

It’s crazy how fast everything is with Jackie and Hyde wonders if maybe this is why Kelso was so desperate to get away. Her eyes are filled with tears. “B-but Hyde I thought we agreed, that _ you _ were alone, and _I_ was alone.” 

Jackie’s maniacal loneliness is a strange phenomenon to be confronted with. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her alone and unattached—even prom proved that when she begged him to take her in lieu of Kelso, and then she ended up with Kelso anyway (although it’s true that was his own doing). 

And the break-up afterward, too. Kind of. 

Guilt makes it easier to tell her that everything will be okay and that she’ll find someone else. The conscience he’s stuffed down deep rises on account of someone he’s never cared to exchange more than the occasional sentence with, however, and that freaks him out. Because why the fuck is he so eager to do all of this for a stranger when he’s never bothered to do it for himself?

Instantly, he backpedals: he tells Jackie as much as he tells himself that he hates her, but also that she’s kind of hot and could totally snag an unbeknownst bystander if she wanted to_ . _ It’s the standard exchange that could be expected to occur between a stoner and a cheerleader like themselves. Jackie smiles. He smiles. 

“_ Thank you, _Hyde.” 

“Anything for you, doll.” 

It’s not a grand statement really. He just complimented her, and like a normal person, she appreciated it. But the words roll around in his head on the way home, because a cheerleader insisted on buying him lunch and then cried in his car, and suddenly he kind of cares what happens to her, and doesn’t think he hates her as much as he’s always convinced himself to believe.

The foreign notion is even more obvious the next week when he agrees to school her on how to play it cool in front of Forman’s sister, who’s running rebound with Kelso and delighting in the gang’s subsequent hostility. Hyde initially entertains the idea because it’s an easy way to dupe Jackie into polishing his boots, but oddly enough by the end of it he likes playing the role of _ sensei _. 

Donna walks in at one point and even ends up as Jackie’s target practice, asking her to go to the mall only to be fronted with a noncommittal “that’s cool”and “whatever”. Hyde doesn’t plan on saying a word, content to sit back and watch, but then Jackie turns back to him, beaming with pride, and he can’t help the smile that slips through. 

She’s his grasshopper. 

Forget the fact that ultimately she still ends up in a cat fight with Laurie. Jackie’s got balls, and Hyde thinks that’s pretty impressive. He wonders why he didn’t notice it sooner. Suddenly a lot of things about her personality feel more like approachable qualities than ticking time bombs, and he thinks this is the “first base” Kelso’s failed to reach the entire time he dated her:

Treating her like a real human being. 


	3. instinct & touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the long wait! My semester is finally over, so hopefully I will churn out a few chapters in the next month. I think I can assume that the chapters will fall chronologically in order from now on. This one sits at the cusp of the second and third seasons, one of my favorite shifts for Jackie and Hyde! It's a bit of introspection on my part, but I like to think Hyde especially began to avoid her after this incident because he realized some part of him was (unwillingly) attracted to her, so I've extrapolated as such. 
> 
> Enjoy! Comments are always welcome and cherished.

She’s crazy. She’s freaking crazy. 

There’s so many ways for him to potentially fuck up, alone or with the rest of the gang in tow, but this is how he has to go: hands behind his back for a bag of coke that’s not even his. 

Hyde has the gall to bail on an impromptu roller disco date, and in retaliation—as he sees it—Jacqueline freaking Burkhart decides to pawn some coke off of her maid and induct herself into “Stoner Nation”. It’s in the makings of her typical daily hysteria, but he can’t get his head wrapped around it the way this cop is wrapping handcuffs around his wrists. He was lounging and reading out of _ MAD _just two hours ago. The whole thing’s insane. 

“With God as my witness,” Jackie calls, watching as he’s escorted away, “I will _ wait _for you!” 

Hyde stifles a groan and settles for glaring at his feet. Honestly? He’d rather die. 

* * *

He gets to attest to the fact, too, sooner than he’d think. Hardly an hour after he’s been let out on probation and settled back into his seat at the diner, Jackie’s hands come to hover in front of his eyes. It’s right as he’s contemplating how horribly this whole thing will go over with Red. His one stipulation for staying with the Formans has always been to refrain from breaking the law, or acting utterly stupid. 

And this instance, as his luck would have it, gloriously applies to both. 

“Guess who!” Jackie chirps. She jumps a little behind him. 

“It’s either Jackie or the cold, clammy hands of death,” he deadpans. The joke flies clear over her head, as expected. “_ Iiiiiit’s _ Jackie!” she sing-songs. Hyde can’t help but sigh. 

“Dammit.”

If she was following him around like a bad smell after the Kelso break-up, now she’s sticking to him like new Velcro on fabric. Jackie wastes no time settling into the booth, grasping onto his hands and arm, praising him all the while for his unabashed bravery. 

There’s no storage compartment within her, no place to process previous circumstances and proceed with their context in mind. Instead, the night’s events are almost like a dream sequence to her. The jeopardy she’s placed him in is hardly important considering he’s cleared her name from the fray. Hyde takes a swig of his beer and wills the alcohol to dull his anxiety. There’s no other conceivable way to deal with all that he’s found on his plate. 

But then Leo walks in, and the earlier irritation wells, because: 1) he missed his shift, 2) he got busted for dope that’s not even his, a fact Red is obviously unaware of, and 3) Jackie Burkhart just permanently established herself as the Hyde Parasite. Altogether, it’s close to his worst nightmare. Maybe the _ zen _lessons were too forgiving an entry into his world. 

Or maybe it was the _ Sizzler’s _. The kiss. The nickname. 

The clock quickly approaches 11 p.m., and Jackie refuses to let go of his hand while she animatedly begins to recount the highlight of the night to Leo. The last bits of her love declaration from earlier whirl around in his head, and on top of wondering whether he’ll still have a home in a few hours, Hyde thinks he’s going to be sick. His cynical, orphan brain isn’t built to handle this much unwarranted headassery on his part, not unless it’s with the rest of the guys playing accomplice. 

“Oh, man,” Leo laughs, the danger of Hyde’s arrest also totally lost on him, “join the club!” 

Hyde can only offer a flat “thanks” in response, to which Leo reasserts the statement with a reminder of Thursday meetings and an Amsterdam vacation fund. Tonight’s company, already vapid to begin with, is now bordering on humiliating. 

Hyde can’t even bring himself to imagine tomorrow. 

* * *

Imagine? He can’t even predict it. 

The whiplash from being kicked out and told to stay on the same day is enormous. It shocks him at first; from the minute he set foot back in Forman’s house last night, he felt like rejection and eviction were inevitable. It was an easy-to-absorb expectation, all things considered. 

But Red broke it—_ shattered _ it—and Hyde realizes that if he’s lived through seventeen years of perpetual abandonment, he can live through anything, including the temporary resurgence of fear incited by possible exile from the Formans’ home. 

It’s not a feeling he dare verbalizes to anyone, regardless. He’s been content to keep a placid face at all times since Edna ran, and for this one it’s no less. There won’t be a single person who can shame him for these things he feels. His loneliness is his own animal to conquer and process. 

All the world can ever see of Steven Hyde is a mask, periodically and fleetingly perturbed. 

All the world excluding Jackie, to be technically correct. 

He and Forman have just retreated to the basement after the lecture of their lives, and Donna now argues in jest with Kelso over the matter of “king”. Hyde tunes out the conversation. He’s still as a pond on the outside, but his heart stutters loudly within. It’ll take him a full day to recover from a rebound like this. 

“Alright, excuse me,” Jackie interjects, abandoning her perch on the laundry machine. He hardly noticed she was there, for all that she played a part in. “I think we’ve all lost sight of what’s really important here.” Her hands grab a hold of his face. He blinks. 

“We’re in love.” 

It takes just about every iota of restraint in Hyde to not do more than lecture her on all the reasons that statement isn’t true. His receding anger from last night pools over into indignant bewilderment, and he hurries to break them apart. The refusal surges up fast in his chest for reasons he can’t possibly begin to understand. 

Steven Hyde is not in love with Jackie Burkhart. He’s the farthest thing from it. That’s what their chat in the car a few weeks ago was supposed to emphasize, but as Jackie is often wont to do, she clearly didn’t get the message or simply elected to ignore it. Her stance doesn’t falter once for the fifteen seconds he spends clapping back. 

“Oh, _ Steven _,” she laughs by the end of it, “you’re such a bad liar!” Her arms loop around his neck, and he realizes for the first time in his life that the hairs on his nape rise to meet her frantic touch. His skin flushes in complement to the freckles already smattering his cheeks. 

He doesn’t know what to think. It’s nothing short of uncomfortable and bizarre. Red walks into the basement, declares his intention to install a smoke detector, and all the while, Jackie hangs onto him, nails alighting like small, stinging firecrackers on his skin. 

He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like her. He's doesn't like the things he's had to think about since she opened her mouth and made him her target. But a pit wells in his stomach, and the warmth of her hand in his becomes familiar. He feels her breath at his shoulder and stirs. 

(Nothing quite like drugs to light a match to and burn.)


	4. burger & bite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So. It's been six months. 
> 
> I apologize so much for the wait! This chapter gave me a _lot_ of trouble. For a long time, the doc simply rotted in my drive. But a kind reviewer showed up months after most of the rest, and I was inclined to re-open it, and voila! Here we have it. A chapter centered on the infamous Veterans Day date. 
> 
> I can't promise regularity in subsequent updates, as I'm sure you've guessed, but I hope this is something that can bring up your spirits given the current climate. I implore that you keep up-to-date with what's going on around you and invest in ways to help this movement and Black people in whatever way you can. This [link](https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/) is constantly being updated with new resources.
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading and commenting.

Nothing about Hyde has felt the same since that night at the diner.

There’s an instinct in him that’s risen since he felt Jackie’s nails on his skin, his subconscious attuned to her gaze as it follows him everywhere. He likens the desperate hope in her eyes to a ticking time bomb, because everything about this sudden atmosphere is too much, too soon, and he can’t handle it, can’t anticipate the incoming blow. 

Everything about her irritates him beyond belief. He hates that she demands his attention and that she gets it—no number of rejections from him can deny the fact that he still gives her words to work with. He’s barbed wire, after all, not a wall, and somehow she slips through to him every time. 

Jackie Burkhart exists within a fantasy world that his childhood could never compensate for, and Hyde finds himself drawn—to her obliviousness, to her persistence, to the innocence of her vapid dreams. He realizes he can’t be harsh around her anymore. Something about him has begun to accommodate her presence, and it terrifies him. 

The space between them in the car right now is so small and insignificant. He doesn’t feel like they’re on uneven ground anymore. 

“Hey, Steven,” she pipes up, face turned to the woody landscapes outside as they drive on the town outskirts. “Buy me a pop?” Her voice is all nonchalant and unassuming, but he knows better than that. Every girl has some expectations. 

“Yeah, whatever.” 

Jackie bites down on a smile. He can picture the giggle she’s trying to suppress, and on one hand it’s amusing but on the other he hopes he hasn’t intimidated her into feeling like she needs to be quiet around him. 

They circle around Green Bay for a while, aimlessly following the city line until Hyde pulls up to a Red Barn and decides to buy them his version of dinner: a Big Barney split between them, two pops, and a medium order of fries. 

It’s not much by her standards, but Jackie doesn’t utter a single word of complaint and he gets to thinking just how much this night must mean to her. 

“This is good,” she mumbles, clearly struggling a bit with her half of a four-by-four burger. Jackie concludes the thought with “very juicy” a minute later, and Hyde can’t help but laugh. He’s suddenly endeared by her wonder at a fast food staple. 

“What, you never had a burger before?” 

“No, Steven, in my sixteen years as an American citizen, I’ve never had a burger.” She scoffs and rolls her eyes before diving back for a bigger bite. Hyde is so used to having the upper hand on her he doesn’t realize how much he enjoys her biting back, even if it’s not a real reprisal. 

He’s more than aware that Eric or Donna could do better, but nonetheless he feels at peace with her in a way hardly any other moment of his life bothers to spare. Back-and-forth with Jackie feels easy, just like walking. 

They end up throwing the wrappers in the back seat for tomorrow’s disposal, and Hyde thinks he’ll take her home, but then the stars in the sky are so nice, and twenty two degrees doesn’t feel so bad when you’ve got a body to share it with. 

He comes around and holds her door open like a gentleman, and they move to sit on the hood of his car, no words, just quiet. 

There’s a valiant attempt to psychoanalyze him in the midst of it all, and maybe she’s onto something, but he doesn’t let it show. Anything to escape the lonely confines of his brain—even the company of a cheerleader he once thought would drive him mad, but who somehow possesses the ability to bring down all of his defenses. 

Hyde follows up on her dramatic monologue with some fake tears and a taunting raspberry, and he knows it’s a little mean, because she hops off of the hood of his car so fast just to go home. 

“Oh, come on,” he laughs, “I’m kidding!” Jackie’s halfway to the driver’s side, but she stops and turns at the sound of his voice. He finds himself smiling, once again unopposed to the idea of spending his time with her. “No, this is—this is alright.” 

There’s that slow smile on her face again, like the one from before when he did or didn’t say he’d buy her a pop, and he just wants to shake her and say, _ Hey, I don’t hate it here. I don’t hate it here with you. _She’s spent all this time running shamelessly after him but the moment she shares in his space it’s like she’s hesitant to consider it real, and he gets it. 

He can make a person feel that way, sometimes. 

The only difference with Jackie is that she considers that feeling for but a moment before bulldozing past. His offer of pop is met with her drawing his arm along her back and her snuggling into his chest, and somehow she ends up with his jacket draped over her shoulders, too. All part of the Jackie Burkhart agenda, he’s well aware. 

They sit like that for what might be fifteen minutes or an hour, he’s not sure and he doesn’t quite care, but eventually she breaks the ice and begins the conclusion to their night with: “So. Our first date’s almost over.” 

“Yeah.” 

She leans over a bit, an expectant look in her eyes. “What’d you think?” 

This is the part where it gets tricky, because obviously Hyde is perfectly capable of realizing dangerous things about himself without revealing them to the people around him. This is how he’s somehow managed to survive living under the same roof as Kitty Forman, who would be content to soak up all of his problems if she were ever allowed. 

But the thing is, Jackie is different. Jackie is so loud-mouthed and unabashed that it drives him a little crazy, in the sense that he doesn’t feel like he’d be so loath to tell her the truth. He’s already decided, after all, that her company doesn’t bother him so much as he originally thought. 

“It was no worse than bowling,” is what Hyde finally settles on, and Jackie looks at him all strange, unable to absorb this half-truth. 

“I don’t hate bowling,” he adds, smiling. It’s just the right thing to say, because next thing he knows, she’s leaning in for a kiss and for some reason he’s leaning into it, too, all internal alarms be damned. 

He tries not to think anything of it at first. It’s your standard brush of lips, and like any smart guy, he obviously prepared with some ChapStick beforehand (albeit not flavored, because who’s going to spend that long in the aisle sorting through scents when that’s not remotely the point of a kiss). Jackie seems to have done the same, and overall it’s a nicer experience than the premise of a kiss between a stoner and cheerleader would entail.

But he’s surprised when she really goes in for it, cupping his face in her hand and smushing her nose against his cheek. She’s a good kisser—good angle, good bite. For some reason he expected more desperation on her end, though, and when they separate his head feels all woozy, emotions jumbled, while Jackie looks more in control than she’s been in the past few months. 

“Huh,” she deadpans. He stills, reeling. 

“Okay—I didn’t feel anything.” 

The backpedaling gears immediately start to turn in Hyde’s head, but not before he replies, curiously, “Nothing?” He feels nothing short of dazed, and then Jackie says the kiss was “hot, _ but_,” and she asks him if _ he _ felt something, and he has to say “no”, because, _ duh_, why would he say “yes” to the most loaded question he’s ever been asked by a girl since Donna? 

He touches two fingers to his lips, and maybe some of her lip gloss comes off on them, but he wipes it away on his pants before he can commit the taste to memory. The two of them are left at a momentary standstill, at this fork in the road that he never could have anticipated because he stupidly thought this was going to be as much of a pity trip as that first one to _ Sizzlers’ _at the mall. 

_ “But if I didn’t know you, and I had never talked to you, I’d think you were totally hot.” _

He wasn’t just propping her up that night, he realizes. He was also propping up himself, willing the distance between the two of them to be large and ridiculous enough so that it would mean nothing—so that this odd friendship between them would mean nothing. 

Hyde somehow masks the crisis in his brain as Jackie admits he was right, but his head spins in the silence and awkward question that follows. The carefree atmosphere from before only returns when he remembers the best way to break any kind of tension when you’re with a girl is to tell a dumb sex joke. 

She shoves him playfully, “Take me home you pig!” 

And it’s an even weirder thing, because the “yes, dear” from him that follows comes to him perhaps more naturally than anything else has that night, but she doesn’t seem to care or notice. Like always, she’s bulldozed past the moment, prepared to careen into the next bullet point on her agenda. 

Hyde drives her home, chooses to stay in the car when she gets out because to walk with her to her doorstep would feel like too much of an admission. He already did that once, and look where he ended up by the time that night was over. 

“Good night, Steven,” Jackie murmurs, rocking on her heels and hanging onto the frame of the open window for a second, as if contemplating what else to say. Hyde just nods, a gentle but pained smile hidden beneath the cover of shadows in his car. He needs to go home and sleep this all off, before it seeps too deep into his brain. 

Jackie lets go of the window and nods back, and before she’s even made it to her porch, he’s off, trying to convince himself that he’s leaving early because of curfew. He makes it home with more than enough time to spare and is about to feel bad for not making sure she made it through her door, but then Forman is pouncing on him asking for details, details, _ details_, and Hyde shoves him aside and locks himself in his room, feigning exhaustion. 

There’s a beer bottle hidden in his usual spot, and someone was nice enough to leave him a covered plate of leftovers in case he missed dinner. The ceiling creaks above him as Forman makes his way up the stairs. All lights in the basement flicker off moments later. 

Hyde collapses into bed and doesn’t think of anything else. 


End file.
